Member

Hm, I wonder how many Japanese developed PS4 games will outsell the top selling Wii U games. Nothing strikes me as definite, though MGSV, Final Fantasy XV, and Kingdom Hearts 3 probably have the potential if you add up all their SKUs. Maybe Resident Evil 7 too.

Banned

Hm, I wonder how many Japanese developed PS4 games will outsell the top selling Wii U games. Nothing strikes me as definite, though MGSV, Final Fantasy XV, and Kingdom Hearts 3 probably have the potential if you add up all their SKUs. Maybe Resident Evil 7 too.

Banned

Sony very specifically referred to FFVII at PSX as a "console exclusive debut". You know what that means right? They didn't it call it a straight up "console exclusive" like they did with Kojima's game. If it was, they would have. Sony's been pretty clear about their exclusivity terms this generation so why would it suddenly be wrong here? There's a very large and obvious difference between the two terms.

Member

Worldwide. And US I guess. Mario Kart 8 will probably end up > 6 million worldwide (and > 2.5 million US?), and while all of those games I mentioned have the potential to do better than that, I don't think it's guaranteed for any of them with just the PS4 SKU.

Banned

Worldwide. And US I guess. Mario Kart 8 will probably end up > 6 million worldwide (and > 2.5 million US?), and while all of those games I mentioned have the potential to do better than that, I don't think it's guaranteed for any of them with just the PS4 SKU.

I could see FFVII skipping Xbone and getting ported to NX instead. But I do think it'll get ported around given the way it was branded at PSX. It's going to be such a massive project for Square that they'll put it multiple platforms to recoup costs. Just my opinion of course.

Banned

It is basically exactly what we saw happen with the big studios in Hollywood. The results are the same. It effectively prices out the competition ensuring that nobody can compete on even ground. It is sad how well that has worked.

I do think indie development is mixing things up though and I couldn't be happier about the success that scene has seen both at the tail end of last gen and throughout this gen.

Cheers to all of you! Appreciate the information. So is it safe to say that Xenoverse is likely a bit more than DQVIII or DQIX in the west but relatively close then?

For what its worth I was able to get some more sales figures for these two titles

So it looks like the 2 most recent mainline entries in the series sold somewhere in the range of 500-600k in US.

Honestly I think the data shows that the series is far from "irrelevant" in the west which is basically why the comparison started to begin with.

You also have to understand that Japanese businesses are generally VERY slow to adapt to new technology. For example most places still use fax machines to send and receive messages between offices and rely solely on physical paperwork and forms for filing and requests. Basically if it works why risk fixing it. As far as game development goes you had studios used to being able to develop their games completely in house to having to rely on outside help (via premade game engines, physics engines etc). The result was japanese developers insisting on creating their own propriatary engines because as far as they have known thus far they were able to develop games entirely in house. The problem was that they underestimated the cost, time and difficulty of 3D engine development which in turn led to a sizable downturn in the production pipeline. Now we are starting to see widespread adoption of tools like Unreal Engine 4 in Japan and the results speak for themselves. As developers become more acclimated and comfortable with these tools we should start seeing production increase significantly. Furthermore it allows for an industry standard skill set which will hopefully help grow game development in Japan via common easily transferable skillsets.

TLDR: It is an exciting time for Japanese console development right now and I truly believe we are on the cusp of a resurgence in both production and relevance this generation. Only time will tell.

The problem is defining at what point a title ceases to be "relevant." Is a title that sells 1000k units in the US relevant? What about a title that sells 800k units in the US or 700k or 600k or 500k or 400k? My point is that all of these titles have an audience when you add all these titles up with the audiences that they cater to that is certainly more sizable than some here seem to believe it is.

It honestly seemed to me like Jig was just saying only titles that come to XB1 are relevant and they are clearly relevant because they come to XB1. This became obvious when he switched the focus from Japanese developed to titles to Japanese developed titles that sold an arbitrary number and the again to Japanese developed titles that didnt have an established exclusivity agreement of some kind. Which I think speaks for itself.

My point was and remains that the Japanese titles coming to XB1 are the exception and not the rule and they are certainly not "only the relevant ones."

Yes this is true. I did not realize how much those titles actually sold in the US until I started looking into it. Furthermore while I knew that Dragon Quest regularly sold 4+ million copies WW I didnt realize how slanted the sales ratio for Dragon Quest was. Regardless to say that these titles arent relevant just seems absurd to me. Especially when they are very relevant in the market for which they are ostensibly made and their popularity and sales in that market will (hopefully) ensure that we see even more titles developed.

Hah i actually had no idea. That's pretty awesome. I do think DQVIII became fairly popular in its own right but no doubt that the demo helped to put it on the map so to speak. Makes you wonder if Square will try doing this strategy for non FF titles again since the ony example we thus far this gen is the FFXV demo with Type 0. Perhaps they will include a FF7 remake demo with a non FF title.

The information they report is accurate. That information is retail sell through. While it might not be the whole picture it still includes the vast majority of Software sales in the US. Furthermore, last I checked, there is no way "digital" hardware so their HW sales figures accurately represent the total market. Oh and they do track bundled games they just dont include the number in the top 10 chart. SO yep you are pretty much wrong every single account including the name: it's NPD not NDP.

See above man dont confuse NDP Muclair with NPD reports. He may give us insight from said company but dont let his name deceive you.

Negative. Japanese developers adopted engines and outside help for what you mentioned last Gen. I have no idea why you have your hopes up for a resurgence in a more expensive Gen. Half the devs who were struggling or went with the Wii or stayed on the ps2 console wise still avent caught up to 2006 360 standards.

Member

Hm, I wonder how many Japanese developed PS4 games will outsell the top selling Wii U games. Nothing strikes me as definite, though MGSV, Final Fantasy XV, and Kingdom Hearts 3 probably have the potential if you add up all their SKUs. Maybe Resident Evil 7 too.

Worldwide. And US I guess. Mario Kart 8 will probably end up > 6 million worldwide (and > 2.5 million US?), and while all of those games I mentioned have the potential to do better than that, I don't think it's guaranteed for any of them with just the PS4 SKU.

Member

To clear some pent up emotions because of some personal happenings that happened today, I'm going to continue (and probably make this a monthly thing) where we look to how the weekly average changes in the upcoming months. This comparison will be going from December (5 weeks) to January (4 weeks, but 5 every few years).

- January is dead.
- January is REALLY dead.
- January as a full month is almost always below the weekly average of December. The only 8th gen console that did not follow this was the PS4's first January, but this was thanks to supply issues at launch.

The PS4 and XB1 had amazing deals during December where both were available for at least $299 for 2 weeks and 3 weeks respectively. For those wondering what January might look like after this month, look to the XB1 in 2014/15 section. December was the last month of the "temporary" price cut, and the price did actually go back to $399 for 2 weeks in January. Because of this, the weekly average tanked to a drop of 86%. It is highly likely we will see a similar percentage drop in the January NPD thread. The PS4 might not suffer as big of a drop thanks to it actually receiving an official $50 price drop back in October.

Banned

I'm going to continue (and probably make this a monthly thing) where we look to how the weekly average changes in the upcoming months. This comparison will be going from December (5 weeks) to January (4 weeks, but 5 every few years).

- January is dead.
- January is REALLY dead.
- January as a full month is almost always below the weekly average of December. The only 8th gen console that did not follow this was the PS4's first January, but this was thanks to supply issues at launch.

The PS4 and XB1 had amazing deals during December where both were available for at least $299 for 2 weeks and 3 weeks respectively. For those wondering what January might look like after this month, look to the XB1 in 2014/15 section. December was the last month of the "temporary" price cut, and the price did actually go back to $399 for 2 weeks in January. Because of this, the weekly average tanked to a drop of 86%. It is highly likely we will see a similar percentage drop in the January NPD thread. The PS4 might not suffer as big of a drop thanks to it actually receiving an official $50 price drop back in October.

Thanks Wellfare! Informative as always. Historical weekly sales average breakdowns are quite an informative way of discussing/discerning trends. I think they are invaluable as a resource for our predictions.

I'm not sure the consoles will fall short of 200k again this year because I don't think the drop will be quite as large as we saw for XB1 last year as the deals were absolutely insane then. In my head I picture last Christmas season as basically Xbox's version of a NOS boost: massive speed increase but incredibly short lived and inevitably costly to long term performance. I dont think any of the deals we saw this holiday season were quite as drastic as what we saw last year. Im thinking they will see a drop of about 80% which would put XB1 at ~220k and PS4 ~250k. Then again the sales were much higher this holiday season so it could be an even worse drop on account of flooding the market. Hmmm. This one's gonna be a tricky one to predict.

This reads like you are saying all the Japanese games coming to the PS4 exclusively are not relevant. Which means they are irrelevant. Which is absurd. If the above is what you had actually said then we could've avoided this whole shebang. Instead you basically deemed a slew of games irrelevant which of course is going to illicit a response.

If your point was actually to discuss the importance of Japanese games in the western market we could have a discussion about that. I agree with Muclair that it is not so much an issue of appeal but an issue of budget. There have been very few "AAA" Japanese games in recent years and it is very difficult for smaller budget titles to compete in the retail market. This, along with a lack of advertising, led to a sharp decline in the retail sales for Japanese games in the west. However, the past few years we have seen some Japanese developers releasing successful high quality content in the west. It has resulted in increased popularity for Japanese games which in turn capitulated a renewed interest in console development in Japan. We have a ton of titles coming and I think we will see a lot more attention for these titles in the west especially new IP like Ni-Oh.

TLDR: I think its unwise to assume that the only Japanese games that can make waves are from established existing IP especially when we have seen meteoric rise of the Souls series, a franchise that didnt even exist 6 years ago. Feel free to disagree if you want but thats my 2 cents on the matter.

You seem to think my point was "Xbox is getting tons of Japanese games whoooo!" and just responded to that. It wasn't. Xbox doesn't have much worthwhile when it comes to Japanese support. And it never will.

No I thought you're point was "well XB1 is getting all the relevant games in the west anyway" because that is what you actually said. When you imply games that people enjoy or are excited for are somehow "irrelevant" that's gonna create some animosity.

Member

How much is a good bit? Seems like a simple solution for publishers to increase their sales if including a demo can nearly triple sales. I would think the 3D world, better graphics and the inceased popularity of dragonball had a much bigger effect.

Obviously we have no way of knowing with absolute certainty, but we do know that DQVIII in 2 months had outpaced DQVII at 6 months by 150% (that's 2.5x the sales of DQVII at 6 months), which probably hadn't given word of mouth much time to spread. Also, monthly sales of DQVIII cratered after FFXII's actual release indicating that a lot of people were still buying DQVIII for the FFXII demo even up to the FFXII release. Word of mouth certainly helped, too, but it's fairly unlikely that so many people would've been pretty much disinterested in the previous iterations of a title and then suddenly jumped on the #8 entry in the series because of better graphics and DragonBall, when this was not a Dragon Ball game, compared to the increase from the FFXII demo inclusion.

The only Japanese game which is gonna outsell it is Metal Gear Solid V.
And i doubt that even Games like Smash Bros, Splatoon, Mario Bros U, Mario 3DWorld, Mario Maker, and Nintendo Land will be topped.
Those games are gonna sell between 5 and 7 million Lifetime.

Relevant is a strange word.
It doesn't mean profitable (because that depends on the budget)
It even doesn't mean "well accepted", because this depends on scope of the game, review scores, mindshare and channel.

So, what does it mean? Worthy to be included for console war lists? Or worthy to be mentioned in a sales thread?

An example: I am sure The Order sold more boxes than Journey, but I am sure it was not as profitable.
Journey made, I estimate, 90% of it's sales digitally. The box was an add-on. And the budged was a fraction of The Order's I guess.
So, The Order was bigger and sold more, but many would agree that Journey was more relevant than The Order in the long run.

Banned

To clear some pent up emotions because of some personal happenings that happened today, I'm going to continue (and probably make this a monthly thing) where we look to how the weekly average changes in the upcoming months. This comparison will be going from December (5 weeks) to January (4 weeks, but 5 every few years).

Also what happened to Obliterator?

2010 (December)/11 (January)

2011/12

2012/13 (January 2013 is a 5 week month. Only happens once in awhile)

2013/14

2014/15

Some things to note.

- January is dead.
- January is REALLY dead.
- January as a full month is almost always below the weekly average of December. The only 8th gen console that did not follow this was the PS4's first January, but this was thanks to supply issues at launch.

The PS4 and XB1 had amazing deals during December where both were available for at least $299 for 2 weeks and 3 weeks respectively. For those wondering what January might look like after this month, look to the XB1 in 2014/15 section. December was the last month of the "temporary" price cut, and the price did actually go back to $399 for 2 weeks in January. Because of this, the weekly average tanked to a drop of 86%. It is highly likely we will see a similar percentage drop in the January NPD thread. The PS4 might not suffer as big of a drop thanks to it actually receiving an official $50 price drop back in October.

In December 2014 XB1 has Sold with a weekly avg of ~259,400, and ~38,000 in January.
That's around -85.6% drop.

The PS4, in other hands, has Sold with an avg of ~213,000, and Sold with an avg of ~48,000, which is a -77.5% drop.

Last year The XB1 Holidays boost were insane, it got an increase of 633% October to November, This is The bigger increase of The history of The console if i remember correctly.
The PS4 boost October to November was like was like ~180%, which is waaaaaaay smaller, so is normal The PS4 drop after The Holidays was smaller.

This time i Can see the same drop for PS4 and XB1 since both got a very strong Holidays.

I think The drop will be More Close to XB1 in 2014 than PS4, because The Situation was very similar with those pricedrop.

Member

I'm not sure the consoles will fall short of 200k again this year because I don't think the drop will be quite as large as we saw for XB1 last year as the deals were absolutely insane then. In my head I picture last Christmas season as basically Xbox's version of a NOS boost: massive speed increase but incredibly short lived and inevitably costly to long term performance. I dont think any of the deals we saw this holiday season were quite as drastic as what we saw last year. Im thinking they will see a drop of about 80% which would put XB1 at ~220k and PS4 ~250k. Then again the sales were much higher this holiday season so it could be an even worse drop on account of flooding the market. Hmmm. This one's gonna be a tricky one to predict.

I personally think that the XB1 will be below 200k again. We are now 1 year into the XB1's lowest price of entry being $349 and coupled that with a very good December and a much more price competitive PS4, it'll do a bit below 200k. However, due to it being at least $349 all month, I'm expecting it to be up YoY from 2015.

Basically what I'm going with right now (almost within 5k of XB1 and Wii U), but I'm thinking the PS4 will perform closer to 200k than that. I've learned that if you have expectations for January, prepare for them to not be met.

Member

I personally think that the XB1 will be below 200k again. We are now 1 year into the XB1's lowest price of entry being $349 and coupled that with a very good December and a much more price competitive PS4, it'll do a bit below 200k. However, due to it being at least $349 all month, I'm expecting it to be up YoY from 2015.

And thank you. Feeling better from yesterday.

Basically what I'm going with right now (almost within 5k of XB1 and Wii U), but I'm thinking the PS4 will perform closer to 200k than that. I've learned that if you have expectations for January, prepare for them to not be met.

I have no idea about brick and mortar in January, but on Amazon the Gears Bundles have been sub 350 the entire month; 299 the lowest and 309 the highest with most the month at 307. It is still lagging greatly behind the PS4, but being lower than last January and no two week spike to 400 should help it YoY, at least in theory.

Member

Has there been any release in January that would pull in people to buy a console for?

Also, as already said, there have been no huge promos for either console. Those who buy their console in January are either uninformed, clueless or have too much money to spend.
Xbox slightly below 200k and PS4 slightly above seems right.

I think that's a good wrap-up. No reason for worries as we will see movement again with Division, Twilight Princess, Far Cry Primal, Ratchet, Uncharted, Quantum Break and of course Sebastien Loeb Rally Evo in spring.

Oh, by the way:
Did you notice that amazon does not name the Vita in their video game console selection above?

Banned

I personally think that the XB1 will be below 200k again. We are now 1 year into the XB1's lowest price of entry being $349 and coupled that with a very good December and a much more price competitive PS4, it'll do a bit below 200k. However, due to it being at least $349 all month, I'm expecting it to be up YoY from 2015.

And thank you. Feeling better from yesterday.

Basically what I'm going with right now (almost within 5k of XB1 and Wii U), but I'm thinking the PS4 will perform closer to 200k than that. I've learned that if you have expectations for January, prepare for them to not be met.

I don't know, last year the gap between PS4-XB1 was ~40,000, with XB1 at $349 and PS4 at $399... This time both has the same price, so seem likely believe this time the gap should be bigger, like ~50k.

Is also true that, for the first week of January the XB1 price was $399, this crushed it's sales that week.
I don't know, maybe all considering the gap will be about the same as last year.

The XB1 this holidays was very competitive with PS4 at the same price, should happen in January too.

Member

I don't know, last year the gap between PS4-XB1 was ~40,000, with XB1 at $349 and PS4 at $399... This time both has the same price, so seem likely believe this time the gap should be bigger, like ~50k.

Is also true that, for the first week of January the XB1 price was $399, this crushed it's sales that week.
I don't know, maybe all considering the gap will be about the same as last year.

The XB1 this holidays was very competitive with PS4 at the same price, should happen in January too.

Member

I have no idea about brick and mortar in January, but on Amazon the Gears Bundles have been sub 350 the entire month; 299 the lowest and 309 the highest with most the month at 307. It is still lagging greatly behind the PS4, but being lower than last January and no two week spike to 400 should help it YoY, at least in theory.

Has there been any release in January that would pull in people to buy a console for?

I think that's a good wrap-up. No reason for worries as we will see movement again with Division, Twilight Princess, Far Cry Primal, Ratchet, Uncharted, Quantum Break and of course Sebastien Loeb Rally Evo in spring.

Oh, by the way:
Did you notice that amazon does not name the Vita in their video game console selection above?

To my knowledge, in recent history no one releases any major games in January. If a game gets pushed from the holidays or is looking to release in Q1, the publisher is going to put them in February and March. (Capcom loves to put DMC in January however) Those months have higher traffic than January (Tax returns).

And yes, February and March will be much much better than January in terms of console sold. Tax returns and a lot of big games coming out in those months.

I don't know, last year the gap between PS4-XB1 was ~40,000, with XB1 at $349 and PS4 at $399... This time both has the same price, so seem likely believe this time the gap should be bigger, like ~50k.

Is also true that, for the first week of January the XB1 price was $399, this crushed it's sales that week.
I don't know, maybe all considering the gap will be about the same as last year.

The XB1 this holidays was very competitive with PS4 at the same price, should happen in January too.

Banned

Has there been any release in January that would pull in people to buy a console for?

Also, as already said, there have been no huge promos for either console. Those who buy their console in January are either uninformed, clueless or have too much money to spend.
Xbox slightly below 200k and PS4 slightly above seems right.

I think that's a good wrap-up. No reason for worries as we will see movement again with Division, Twilight Princess, Far Cry Primal, Ratchet, Uncharted, Quantum Break and of course Sebastien Loeb Rally Evo in spring.

Oh, by the way:
Did you notice that amazon does not name the Vita in their video game console selection above?

Member

Obviously we have no way of knowing with absolute certainty, but we do know that DQVIII in 2 months had outpaced DQVII at 6 months by 150% (that's 2.5x the sales of DQVII at 6 months), which probably hadn't given word of mouth much time to spread. Also, monthly sales of DQVIII cratered after FFXII's actual release indicating that a lot of people were still buying DQVIII for the FFXII demo even up to the FFXII release. Word of mouth certainly helped, too, but it's fairly unlikely that so many people would've been pretty much disinterested in the previous iterations of a title and then suddenly jumped on the #8 entry in the series because of better graphics and DragonBall, when this was not a Dragon Ball game, compared to the increase from the FFXII demo inclusion.

Focusing on analytics to give your emotions time to clear sounds like a good plan. Hope you're doing better!

Or it could simply be that the next big game was out. Also it didn't have to be Dragonball but all the people I knew were excited that the creator of Dragonball Z did the art for DQ. I would expect sells to increase over DQ7 because no one I knew even heard of DQ7 but there was just overall more awareness of DQ8.

Also games go up in popularity all the time. The two biggest games of the last few years GTA and COD became much more popular than their original releases with changes to gameplay, setting and graphics.

Agree to disagree but I can't see a demo being the biggest driver of the games success. Some one who is willing to spend $50 for a demo is probably the same person who would be into JRPGs heavy like that anyway IMO. And would of most likely purchased the game anyway.

Honestly I just thought about this Januar.
Amazing that this is a tradition.
I can understand that it's a bad month for consoles, but I really don't get why all games avoid Januar like the plague. Don't people want to buy games then or is it only a self-fulfilling prophecy because there simply are no games to buy? Seems better to avoid end-of-year-pogo and release when there is no competition.

Member

Honestly I just thought about this Januar.
Amazing that this is a tradition.
I can understand that it's a bad month for consoles, but I really don't get why all games avoid Januar like the plague. Don't people want to buy games then or is it only a self-fulfilling prophecy because there simply are no games to buy? Seems better to avoid end-of-year-pogo and release when there is no competition.

I think Cosmic has data on this, but even if there are a lot of games releasing in a similar time frame, the amount of spending actually increases, so releasing in a semi-crowded month like February or March is still better than launching in January.

Almost all major retailers' (GameStop and Walmart included) fiscal years end in January. Retailers want to close their years as lean in inventory as possible. That means games launched in January get much smaller initial buy in than those launched in other months.

Member

Almost all major retailers' (GameStop and Walmart included) fiscal years end in January. Retailers want to close their years as lean in inventory as possible. That means games launched in January get much smaller initial buy in than those launched in other months.

Member

Almost all major retailers' (GameStop and Walmart included) fiscal years end in January. Retailers want to close their years as lean in inventory as possible. That means games launched in January get much smaller initial buy in than those launched in other months.

GTA would never do that, but sure GTA is the exception to every rule. And every other company pitching a game talks about how great their game is going to do and how it's going to exceed all benchmarks. So that never really flies.

And when a buyer's bonus is on the line in terms of carried inventory, you could come in arguing anything and be shown the door. A buyer's bonus structure trumps EVERYTHING ELSE.

Mrgrgr

Almost all major retailers' (GameStop and Walmart included) fiscal years end in January. Retailers want to close their years as lean in inventory as possible. That means games launched in January get much smaller initial buy in than those launched in other months.